End in sight for Route 724 construction in Reading

When the roadblocks went up on Route 724, Melanie Degler's commute to her job in Douglassville instantly became 10 minutes longer.

The bit of the highway she usually takes to get on Interstate 176 and then Route 422 from her home in Cumru Township's Flying Hills development was closed so the Reading Area Water Authority could install a 16-inch main.

Now, she has to go south on Route 10 only to come back north on the interstate.

"We don't have a lot of streets here to take as alternatives, so you have to go out of your way to go around it," Degler said.

She's not alone. According to PennDOT, an average of 7,600 vehicles traveled Route 724 between Route 10 and Interstate 176 daily before it was closed in August.

And the resulting traffic problems have been amplified because the detour travels through two PennDOT road projects: a nighttime repaving of the West Shore Bypass and a project rebuilding and widening Interstate 176 from Route 724 north.

But the headaches could be over soon.

Crews should be ready to reopen the road by the first or second week of December, said Alan Wong of BCM Engineers, the construction manager for the project.

All they have left to do is finish up laying the last bit of pipe and then rebuild the road over it, he said.

"Things are going really well," Wong said. "We're in a rhythm. We have two full crews out there."

The project was expected to finish close to the end of the year but is ahead of schedule because, at the request of PennDOT, an extra crew was put on, he said.

Advertisement

Crews were even further ahead but had to break four days for Hurricane Sandy and the aftermath.

"What we gained we lost," Wong said.

Exactly when drivers will be able to travel the stretch again will depend on whether any extra work needs to happen once crews have finished installing the main and test it, he said. Once that's squared away, crews will pave over the stretch with blacktop so the patch and stone surface that's there now is covered up before winter.

"You really want to make it a safe condition for people to drive on," Wong said.

Crews have already started another phase of the project on Route 10 between the intersection with Route 724 and Mountain View Road. The road is staying open during that work with flaggers directing traffic between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.